And as Minnesota said there used to be a gallery of forum avatars to choose from,
and initially i thought maybe the problem with avatars vanishing it may have just been with uploading your own avatar so went to try one from the gallery but there was no gallery

Sorry to be a pain
Just letting you know there is none there origon,
below is what comes up when trying to choose one
Im happy with my photo of my cat as my avatar,
but other members might like to use gallery one's

Gallery Avatars
Avatar type:
You can choose your avatar from a locally available set of avatars.
No avatars currently available